Chapter 227 - Through the Looking Glass IV

The vampire queen gazed lazily upon the city as she awaited a cup of warm blood. It was a familiar scene. The decorations going up around the city were as regular as the winter itself. With the festive mood in the air, there came a strange shift in the city’s demographic. The increase in the number of humans was to be expected. Being in heat all year round, they flocked to the seaside whenever the spawning season reared its head. It was a behaviour that often led not only to an increase in the number of halfbreeds, but the creation of new species as well. Centaurs, satyrs, and minotaurs could all trace their roots back to humans and their partners.

Two such examples walked by the window right as the thought came to mind, one that looked almost entirely human, with a few catlike features, and another that seemed to have stemmed from some sort of involvement with a reptile. The pair was transporting the body of a towering, mudfish-like monster, likely something they had caught while out at sea, with the feline asking for those in their path to make way.

Naturally, it was impossible for the queen to see such a sight from her place in the palace. She was seated not upon her throne, but within a small restaurant in the middle of the shopping district. It was in no official capacity that she visited. The servers hadn’t the slightest clue that their monarch was among them, and she had made sure that there was nothing to give her away. She was dressed in cheap linens, her guards were nonpresent, and while not overly abundant, her species was common enough to be overlooked.

Perhaps precisely because she was so unassuming, she found herself forgotten by the servers. The warm drink she had requested some twenty minutes prior had yet to arrive, a test of patience to say the least. But the bloodsucker refused to complain. If anything, she enjoyed the lackluster service. To be forgotten by the city was to live as she did in days past, before she had even dreamt of seizing the throne.

It was precisely by comparing the past and present that she found satisfaction in her handiwork. Vel’khan was no longer a religious state. Gone were the days where it was driven by nonsensical principles practiced only to procure divine favour. They were gone and forgotten, just like the restrictions on the gods that could and couldn’t be worshiped. Of course, not everything was perfect. The divine cliff, for example, still contained references only to the deities that had been acknowledged by her precursors, but change was sure to come. It took only twelve years for the average citizen to spawn a new generation, and most were still in their rebellious phases by the time they first sought to seed the seas.

Those that were her age or older were still present in droves and held firmly to their beliefs, but the national zeitgeist drove their successors to derive rules from more modern principles. It was a time of change and romance, an age where old masterpieces were defaced in the name of a shift towards mindfulness and good stewardship. Waves of change that some shepherded as salvation. And that others refused to acknowledge. And it was precisely that latter group that was seeking to off her head. She knew of its existence, and even its more notable members as well. But there was nothing more she could do. The monarch had already cast her die. All that was left was to wait for the results to show.

One might suspect that it was unwise for her to be out and about with a rebellion brewing on the horizon, but the queen was not concerned with her safety. She was but one cog in the wheel. Even in the case of an assassination, she was confident that her policies would persist, lest the country find itself conducting something as absurd as an outright purge. That wasn’t to say that she was looking to die, of course. She would not have left the castle on her own had she been concerned with matters of safety. But the reality of the situation was that such concerns were entirely unnecessary. It was with her very own teeth that she had brought an end to the last monarch’s reign. She was confident that she would emerge unscathed even if trapped in a whole senate of knives. Assuming that they could even pick her out from others of her species.

The resilience wrought by her racial identity was certainly a boon, but not all her sensory organs functioned the same way as everything else’s. Perhaps for that reason, Queen Priscilla found it difficult to differentiate between those with only humanoid features. Alas, there was no need. The imperial bloodkraken locked in the castle’s dungeons were treated not as individuals, but livestock. There was no need to know the face of each heifer, cow, and calf, let alone differentiate between specimens of the same breed.

To keep the royal blood flowing was no doubt a risk, but an extermination was to nobody’s benefit. The giant squids were too useful to simply discard. Their inky milk was nutritious enough for a single cup to nurse a sickly man back to health, and their hearts could be crushed to make miracle drugs that could fix all but curses and death. It was unclear if this ability stemmed from the moon goddess’ blessing, or if the night mother had chosen their species precisely because of their properties. Either way, in an absurd twist of fate, the squids themselves were easily crippled by malediction. The healing properties of their flesh and fluid could only be passed onto others, not used for their own gain.

Equally as absurd was the state of their kingdom. They had lorded over it with a ruthless, iron fist under the guise of following their goddess’ guidance. It was not an approach without merit—Vel’khan prospered under their rule and blossomed from a single city state into a kingdom that spanned over a dozen strongholds—but neither was it without its flaws, for it was the goddess’ strict belief that only those who worked deserved to eat.

It was that philosophy that the vampire queen despised. And how could she not, with the madness that plagued her bloodline? Too many of hers were discarded for their inability to further the rock’s great plan. Under Priscilla’s rule, it was only those too proud to accept charity that went hungry. Not all the residents were happy with the changes she made; she had hiked taxes for the well-to-do, especially wealthy noble estates, in order to fund programs to assign value to those that otherwise had none.

She recognised that her choices had led to an immense uptick in crime, as well as further isolation of the upper classes. Still, they were just. She was just.

That was why she had been allowed to pry the kingdom from the royal family’s hands.

Even without a god at her back.

___

A man with a scruffy beard and a disheveled head of hair sat alone in a dark room. The only light that he had on was that of the display in front of him, a sparkling OLED TV with a screen so bright that it lit the lounge like a torch; the extremely pixelated lava chambers dyed everything from the leather couch to his PC in a deep shade of red. The glowing metal box was hooked up to a shiny new game console, which was in turn connected to the fight sticks and controllers in the seat beside him. It was the type of setup that came with a thousand wires, guaranteed to be tangled the moment he accidentally put anything in the wrong place.

A more sensible person in his situation surely would have opted to connect the controllers wirelessly instead, but the man was strictly against them. He had always found the airborne signals unreliable; the milliseconds that they lost were far too valuable when it came down to the wire. To provide himself the best street-fighting and block-stacking experiences, he would need a direct connection, both from controller to console, and console to the net—not that he had anyone to compete against, or even the ability to go online for that matter.

That was the worst part about being stuck in limbo. Claire was one of the few he could play against, and she was still just a novice, barely any better than the level 9 AI.

He grabbed the remote and switched the channel when the ascended lyrkress crossed his mind. The television was happy to respond. The magmatic cubes that had covered the screen were immediately replaced by the scene of a bloody massacre, and when he pressed the full immersion button, the change was applied to the rest of the world around him. Everywhere he looked, he saw the sea, the underwater city that Claire was in the midst of exploring. That was not to say that he had left his room. The scruffy man was still seated on the couch with one hand on the remote and the other scratching his equally scruffy balls. If he walked too far, he would run into the wall, or maybe even the TV if he was careless.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

That particular mistake, he had only made once. And while he had certainly catapulted face first into the wall and broken his nonexistent nose, he was not of the mind that it was his fault. Flux was the one that had failed to specify his boundaries and limitations.

He smiled as he considered the possibility that his beloved goddess was watching the very same scene. Knowing her, it would be with bated breath that she observed, for Claire had challenged a foe that any sane fighter would have opted to avoid.

But even if Flux was present, looking over his shoulder, she was certainly not the most shocked party involved. That title belonged instead to the leviathan that suddenly found itself under attack. Those that ventured into the Swirling Abyss would typically leave without considering its final encounter, but the reckless moose had immediately charged the two-headed fortress as soon as the opportunity arose. Without resting, and still injured from her encounter with the phantom legion, she had launched herself straight through the water and into the turtle-snake’s face with a sky-shattering blow.

Three seconds into the fight, she called upon the intersection of his powers and her own. So he pulled out one of his puppets—namely the poorly-made horse—and threw it into the fray. He manipulated it with the remote control plugged into its back, moving it around as he acted out its ridiculous personality. Unfortunately, he was dismissed after absorbing a pair of spells, but alas, such was the pony’s lot in life. It was his fault for coming up with such a ridiculous character, even if Claire had given him exactly the reaction he’d hoped.

Headhydra was called upon next, so he reached into the dimension next door and retrieved the sulky lizard’s spirit. She played along reluctantly when handed the controls, moving along to the will of her killer.

Though Farenlight behaved the way that she did, the man knew that she suffered not nearly as much as she let on. Her outward facade was one of defiance, but in her heart, she respected the creature that had bested her, especially after laying eyes on the halfbreed’s far inferior status. Of course, she would never admit it, especially not to the man sitting beside her, but he understood. Because they existed in the same shared space, because they lay dormant within the same vessel, each could easily see into the heart of the other.

While the hydra played pilot, the ghost looked carefully at the fight and watched over the lyrkress’ motions. He was particularly overjoyed when she suddenly and seamlessly went from backflipping over one of the leviathan’s attacks to bashing her lizard into its skull. It was a smooth but impossible motion, one that could only be performed if the laws of physics were to be ignored. Officially, it was just another application of force magic, specifically one derived from the nulling of momentum, but he knew it instead as a real-life animation cancel. The concept was absurd at best, but so too was force magic as a whole. Its very presence stood in blatant defiance of the third law.

He had been pleasantly surprised when Claire had developed the ability. Perhaps due to his influence, or perhaps because Flux had used so much of her own stardust in her making, the girl’s affinity for it was surprising. Her refusal to learn Newton’s teachings had only bolstered her ability to ignore them, and it was precisely that trait that had allowed him to imprint upon her a motion as ridiculous as springing into the air in the middle of a roll.

But even with her unnatural movements, the leviathan was able to keep up. Its body moved nearly twice as fast as hers, and it was much better in the water, but still, four ars magnae and three hundred points of divinity later, the beast fell. It roared one last time, as if to curse the intruder, and collapsed into a lifeless heap.

Likewise, the scruffy man fell over as well. He rested his head against the hydra on his couch and slowly closed his eyes. He had started to feel rather exhausted as of late, and the sensation only strengthened each time the half-dragon grew.

At the current rate, it would not be long, only a few hundred more levels before the inevitable was upon him.

He did not fear the end, nor did he resent it. Such was the fate of those that lived on in death. But he would not go without first seeing his last duties through and bestowing all the knowledge that he had failed to act upon.

___

Kal’syr of Avande’arr looked up from the book in her lap as her large ears caught wind of a disturbance. The tree-pigs that inhabited her island were squealing in panic, running about as they fled from the guests that had landed on the beach. From what she could tell, there were five of them, all voices whose names she knew.

She considered closing her book, getting off her chair, and greeting the guests as she had the last few times they came, but beneath the evening sun, she found herself just a little too weary. She closed her eyes instead, leaning back into the soft, cushioned seat whilst setting her reading material down on the table by her side.

Tired or not, the old lady had every intention of entertaining her visitors. It was meant to be a moment of respite, a minute at most, but when she next opened her eyes, she found that she was lying in bed, dressed in her pajamas with the covers up to her shoulders. For a moment, she thought the visitation a dream, but a quick glance at her bedside confirmed its occurrence.

The novel she had been reading had been placed atop her dresser, right beside a letter marked with an unfamiliar seal. Opening it, she found a slew of pretentious words written in the most pompous Marish she had seen in decades, a full two-page document many times longer than the message it was meant to convey. Still, she read it carefully, word by word. The young lady’s voice rang through her head as she did and slowly grew her smile until it spanned her face. She enjoyed imagining the events that its writer had laid out for her—both the adventures and the everyday encounters—for it was only vicariously that she could experience them again.

It was not just her old, creaky bones that stopped her, but her hunters as well. Like all of Avande’arr’s key figures, she was marked for death. The kelpies blessed by Kael’ahruus would know as soon as she stepped foot outside the dungeon. They would track her and give chase, unrelenting until either she or they lay dead.

Her fate was identical to that of every other Avande’arrian official. All of them had been included in the imposters’ pledge, and most had already fallen. Even their champions had lost to the lion’s fangs. That was why the goddess of the flow had sheltered them. So that their people would not meet the same fate as hers.

Alas, even with the goddess’ sympathies, there was no stopping the inevitable.

Unless there were more like Claire, who had naturally arisen as one of her species, or unless one of the others had a child secretly hidden away, it would only be a matter of time.

But while she had feared the eventuality at first, Kal’syr had grown over time to accept it, embrace it even. The extinction of her species was but another point in the cycle, a singular node in the infinite flow. Life would still go on, and one day, perhaps soon, or perhaps in the distant future, their will would undoubtedly be carried. Of course, that was not to say that the old lyrkress would be kicking the bucket anytime soon. She was confident she had another hundred years, maybe even two or three if she was lucky.

Whatever the case, the old lady hopped out of bed with a surprisingly youthful energy and headed straight into the dining room. The letter had mentioned that they left her a meal that would be easy on her body, and she was more than keen on seeing its contents. Last she checked, Claire was anything but a cook; she had so little talent for the art of cuisine that she had failed to develop any meaningful skill after half a dozen sessions. Of course, her reluctant attitude and her countless naps did little to aid in the effort, but the old priestess had at least expected her to learn something.

When she walked over to the dining table, she found the entire construct shrouded in a large bubble with a wispy, translucent fox sitting on top of it. When it noticed her, the creature waved, clapped its paws, and vanished alongside the spherical veil.

“How is any of this supposed to be ‘easy on my body?’”

She had expected porridge or gruel, something simple enough for even the anti-chef to make, but the entire dining room table was covered in meat. Meat, plates, and tiny side dishes that were barely visible next to the towering mountains of cooked flesh.

There was even another piece of paper sitting atop the highest pile, with “P.S. I didn’t make any of this,” written in a string of obnoxiously large letters.

Kal’syr pressed a hand to her face as she tried to read her own expression. She wasn’t sure how she felt, or even how she was meant to feel. On one hand, she had hoped for one of the younger lyrkress’ homemade creations, but on the other, she was relieved to have been given something edible instead. During their last lesson, Claire had somehow managed to transform a beautiful fresh fish, extracted and butchered just a few minutes prior, into a lump of coal. And that was with the older lady quite literally watching over her shoulder and guiding her through the process.

When she recalled the memory, Kal’syr laughed. It was a quiet chuckle at first, but its volume grew as she grabbed one of the dishes and walked out onto the porch. The outcome was so absurd that she was tempted to think it the work of one god or other, but as a priestess, understood that there was no such party involved.

Still cackling, she looked up at the morning sun, took a small bite, and smiled.

The meat loaf may not have been home made, but it was certainly delicious.